Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/150

146 the hue and cry, "Eh! come and see the wild bearded man, who saved Mary Lawson."

On another occasion, I was hunting on the Scottish mountain of Criffel, and, having reached its summit, I sat down to look around on the fine prospect of sea and land below me, and take some refreshment. At a little distance I saw something like the figure of a human being, bedded in the heath, and lying looking on the Solway from a projecting rock, so still and motionless that it seemed dead. I went near: it was Miles Colvine. He seemed unconscious of my approach, and, looking steadfastly on the sea, remained fixed, and muttering, as long as I continued on the mountain. Indeed, wherever he went, he talked more like a man holding communion with his own mind than one sharing his thoughts with others; and the general purport of such imperfect sentences as could be heard was that he had doomed many men to perish for some irreparable wrong they had offered to a lady. Sometimes he spoke of the lady as his wife, or his love, and the men he had destroyed as the lawless crew of his own vessel. At other times he addressed his seamen as spirits, whom he had sent to be tortured for wrongs done in the body, and his lady as an angel that still visited his daily dreams and his nightly visions. Through the whole of these wayward musings the cry of revenge, and the sense of deep injury, were heard and understood by all.

When Miles Colvine had fairly finished his new residence, and the flowers and fruits had returned to field and tree, he was observed to launch his boat: this was a common occurrence, but a small lair of seal-skins, a jar of water, and some dried fish called kippered salmon by the Scotch, looked like preparation for a long voyage. The voyage was begun, for he was seen scudding away southward by the light of the stars, and no more was seen or heard of him for some time. Day after day his door continued shut, his chimney ceased to smoke, and his nets hung unemployed. At length the revenue cutter from Saint Bees arrived at Allanbay, to land a cargo of fine Holland gin, which the officers had taken from an Irish smuggler, between Carrickfergus and the Isle of Man. They had been terribly alarmed, they said, on their way, by the appearance, about the third watch of the night, of a visionary boat, navigated by a bearded fiend, which scudded with supernatural